Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If Everything On the Internet Was DRM Protected?

dryriver writes: The whole Digital Rights Management (DRM) train started with music and films, spread horribly to computer and console games (Steam, Origin), turned a lot of computer software you could once buy-and-use into DRM-locked Software As A Service or Cloud Computing products (Adobe, Autodesk, MS Office 365 for example) that are impossible to use without an active Internet connection and account registration on a cloud service somewhere. Recently the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) appears to have paved the way for DRM to find its way into the world of Internet content in various forms as well. Here's the question: What would happen to the Internet as we know it if just about everything on a website -- text, images, audio, video, scripts, games, PDF documents, downloadable files and data, you name it -- had DRM protection and DRM usage-limitations hooked into it by default?

Imagine trying to save a JPEG image you see on a website to your harddisk, and not only does every single one of your web browsers refuse the request, but your OS's screen-capture function won't let you take a snapshot of that JPEG image either. Imagine trying to copy-and-paste some text from a news article somewhere into a Slashdot submission box, and having browser DRM tell you 'Sorry! The author, copyright holder or publisher of this text does not allow it to be quoted or re-published anywhere other than where it was originally published!'. And then there is the (micro-)payments aspect of DRM. What if the DRM-fest that the future Internet may become 5 to 10 years from now requires you to make payments to a copyright holder for quoting, excerpting or re-publishing anything of theirs on your own webpage? Lets say for example that you found some cool behind-the-scenes-video of how Spiderman 8 was filmed, and you want to put that on your Internet blog. Except that this video is DRM'd, and requires you to pay 0.1 Cent each time someone watches the video on your blog. Or you want to use a short excerpt from a new scifi book on your blog, and the same thing happens -- you need to pay to re-publish even 4 paragraphs of the book. What then?

Comments

What if all men were made of straw?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> What Would Happen If Everything On the Internet Was DRM Protected?

What if all men were made of straw?

Re:What if all men were made of straw?

[lgw]

A better question would be "what if most of the present intenet was DRM-protected?" I'd note that there are plenty of sites that use some JS BS to try to stop you from saving images. The answer of course is "people who cared about that would use the rest of the internet".

What do you do now if you don't want to consume DRM video? You stick with YouTube and torrents and avoid Netflix et al.

reminds me of another question

[tomhath]

When my daughter was about 5 years old she asked me "What would happen if a monster ate the whole world?".

This Ask Slashdot question makes about as much sense as my daughter's.

Re:reminds me of another question

[mnemotronic]

+1

As far as answering your daughter's question: Well honey, eventually the monster would poop it out and it would look exactly like the world we live in now.

Re:Iâ(TM)ll continue going hiking

[Miser]

I'd take up/have time for more hobbies, one of which includes finding places to explore in the warmer months. If the Internet and tech in general weren't as "free" (in quote on purpose) as they are now, I'd just do other things unless there was a crack/hack available.

Too late to stuff that genie back in the (DRM) bottle anyway.....

Re:Not much

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

There's a fine balance between not enough DRM, where copyright holders can't live off their work, and too much DRM that's so expensive and so annoying that people massively turn to piracy and ruin the copyright holders.

The right balance is where the return for copyright holders is maximized. Even greedy bastards like the MPAA/RIAA know it and turn a blind eye to massive copyright infringements that they would much rather didn't happen.

So the OP's point is moot: the internet will never be completely DRM-locked, because it would plain kill DRM in very short order.

You'd start earning money

[holophrastic]

I think most people forget that you post content too. Write a story, a good blog article, take a nice photograph. Wouldn't it be swell if you actually got paid for something that people make popular?

So let's take the recent pay-with-computer-cycles as a decent example of a future ubiquitous micropayments convenience. Download a jpeg? Pay by waiting through ten seconds of computer cycles. You'll survive with short wait times for things that you find interesting.

Of course, when thousands of others download your jpeg, you'll get the cycles in return.

That's a good thing, because the more times currency moves, the better the very same economy. Still-money isn't good for an economy, money-in-motion is a good economy.

The trouble with DRM today is that it over-complicates reasonable convenience. But if that complication were gone, then it simply becomes a standardized form of valuation.

It can be noted that physical sales have taken the same route, hundreds of years ago.

It was easier to just go into someone's yard, and eat the berries off of their trees. Imagine if every berry that you take required you to pay for it with the milk from your farm animals? Well, wait a minute, what if we make something and call it money, that we can trade for berries and for milk, so we don't need to carry around both milk and berries? And what if we make something called stores, and sell the berries in quantized packages, so it's not a per-berry compensation?

DRM is a modern problem. As such, we don't have a modern solution. The moment we devise a modern solution, DRM will become an old problem, just like everything else.

To sum up, the DRM problem is simply an issue of barter -- how can I trade value that I have, for value that I want. I want a digital file. I have this penguin. They simply aren't conveniently compatible -- because the web-site with the jpeg doesn't accept penguins in-trade. The web-site also doesn't accept cash, nor credit cards for simple jpeg rights, all because the mechanism of jpeg delivery isn't conveniently compatible with current mechanism for currency delivery.

That'll change. Give it time. Jpeg's weren't worth anything when they were low-res photos of cats, so we didn't care twenty years ago.

Re:You'd start earning money

[holophrastic]

I create more content than I consume. Sorry if you don't. But if you're consuming and not contributing, I'm totally fine with you not profiting. In short, if it's not worth anything to you (neither money, nor time, nor trade) then you really shouldn't be wasting your time with it. Spend that time with your family, you'll feel better.

Re:You'd start earning money

[holophrastic]

a) we're talking about creating in terms of consuming, not producing. If I write a blog article read by a thousand consumers, I get a thousand points, not one.

b) I am a programmer. I do program web-sites. Some of those web-sites receive a few thousand pageviews per hour. That's fairly typical of a medium business's web-site.

c) For a successful movie director's movies to be watched more times than he himself has watched movies is pretty logical. But we're not just talking about a man's movie watching. Maybe he also writes interviews but doesn't read any.

d) we're not talking about now. we're talking about the OP's highly hypothetical concept that I could own the rights for this post.

Make your own internet?

[Seven Spirals]

I've thought about that scenario, too. It'd just be way too easy for the gubment to ban Wifi, WiMax (already licensed anyway), and packet radio for purposes of building your own network. That way only the politician's handlers can decide who gets access to the-one-and-only-Internet. Don't you think they'd just cut off the DIY avenue pretty quick? I mean, that's almost as dangerous as pirate radio. We simply can't have people just, you know, saying whatever they want. You think there is some kind of universal law protecting free speech? What? What is this burst dependent you speak of? Oh...... first amendment?.. Yeah, we don't do that anymore.

Really?

[JediJorgie]

> The whole Digital Rights Management (DRM) train started with music and films

How can I take any of it seriously when they start with a statement like that? Computer games had DRM, (often based on looking up things in the manual) long before folks with dealing with digital music and video.

Re:Really?

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly.

Back in the 80's we called it "Copy Protection" and we "kracked" (*) that stupid shit because media wears out, companies go out of business, kids damage disks, to LEARN, etc. and we got the legal right to back up our software.

DRM is a big "Fuck You to our legal right."

Sadly most people are wussies to get the law to change due to the country being an oligarchy / plutocracy / corporate shill, etc.

(*) Fucking media hijacked the definition of these words:

* Krack = Crack = to remove copy protection
* Kracker = someone who removed copy protection
* Hack = Quick Fix
* Hacker = Someone who is motivated SOLELY to LEARN. The unwritten "code of conduct" was to NEVER damage _anything._

New hijacked meaning:

Crack = drug
Hacker = someone who breaks into systems for either damage, for profit, espionage, etc.

Now get off my LAN.

DRM for DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm okay with DRM products, as long as I can spend Digital Rights Money (DRM) on it.

Digital Rights Money lets me tell the product seller when and on what they are allowed to spend the money I gave them.

Oh, and it requires a connection to my server.

Oh, and if they haven't spent the money by the time I decide I no longer want to run the server, the money is now unspendable.

Yep. I'm totally okay with this DRM for DRM arrangement.

Re:Internet and Roads

[Geoffrey.landis]

Yeah, I'm going there... what if every road required you to display your drivers license in the windshield to be scanned every time you go anywhere?

Then we would rename "driver's license" with the term "license plate," since that's what a license plate is.

I would use the internet less ...

[Qbertino]

... and move to some alternative that would presumably pop up roughly 20 minutes into the internet going total DRM.

Coming to think of it that would probably be exactly what the world needs to finally move to some namecoin driven namecoin driven mesh network alternative to the intarweb.

Re:Let's be honest

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is an underrated argument. If everything was effectively DRM'd, we would have to find solutions that weren't painful for legitimate customers or for society as a whole. There would have to be some mechanism where fair use could actually, well, be used. There would have to be some mechanism to demonstrate who a legitimate rightsholder was to qualify for the DRM, so takedown mechanisms that can be abused today wouldn't need to exist in the same way. Copyright durations would have to be sensible and there would have to be a mechanism for ensuring works were properly released when the time came. If businesses adopted subscription models and then started hiking up prices once they'd got data locked in, we would soon have laws mandating data portability to promote fair and legal competition (much as the EU is now introducing with the GDPR, albeit for a slightly different reason).

Most of the problems with DRM aren't really problems with DRM, they're problems with DRM denying customers what they legitimately paid for, DRM denying society its side of the copyright bargain, or badly implemented DRM having negative side-effects that are nothing to do with IP rights, such as creating security vulnerabilities or privacy problems.

Of course, in practice such a system would be unworkable for a variety of reasons, but it's an interesting thought experiment along the lines of "What if copyright law were actually enforced robustly?"

Re:Not much

[GameboyRMH]

Oh please, the idea that DRM deters piracy is a fallacy. It never has, which is why publishers have been doubling down trying insanely complicated and powerful DRM systems like Denuvo in an attempt to make it so strong that it might actually do something. If publishers were smart they'd make their works affordable and DRM-free for maximum profitability. DRM is a symptom of nonsensical, emotion-based business superstitions.

Re:The government and business wins?

[rally2xs]

Nope, nobody wins because the internet would be effectively unusable. We'd all have to go back to the library for our information. Nobody would have enough money to pay the bastards whatever they wanted for the DRM unlock, so... the internet would be unusable.

Re:The government and business wins?

[tattood]

I just assume the NSA has so many backdoors already they won't really benefit much from whatever additional monitoring possibilities DRM offers.

The backdoors that may exist cannot be legally used in court to prosecute somebody. If the entire Internet has DRM, then that allows law enforcement to legally and easily track user browsing and use it in court.

Re:The government and business wins?

[Baton Rogue]

Nobody would have enough money to pay the bastards whatever they wanted for the DRM unlock, so... the internet would be unusable.

DRM does not mean that every single thing needs to be paid for. It just means that the consumer cannot freely copy the content and use it somewhere else.

Re:On the other hand...

[roc97007]

Wait, that's potentially huge. It seems to me that DRM on everything, including my own content, means I could severely limit the rights of *anything* I originate, including metadata.

This won't just be "an issue" for Facebook, it'd destroy it. And probably Google. And any business that makes a significant part of their gross from data mining.

That might actually be fun to watch. (Just before the lights go out...)

That is a stupidly easy answer, and it will amaze!

[thegarbz]

The internet will [Protected content, you need Slashdot Premium Plus membership to access this post]

Re:Don't think of it as "everything on the Interne

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Way back when the tin-foil crowd were Going on about the risks of "Trusted computing". At the time it seemed so far fetched.

Yet here we are today.

And then there were two.

[fish_in_the_c]

I'd be sure to have a button in my search engine and or brower that said "never list sites contain DRM" So you can choose between the 'open net' and the 'commercial net'.

Well

[nnull]

The same thing I do with idiotic companies that want me to sign a ridiculous NDA with no time limit every time I step into their place. I simply ignore them until they break.

Fair Use is where DRM breaks down...

[Lodragandraoidh]

Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship. Fair use provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor test.

The first factor is "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes." To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new.

The second factor takes into consideration the nature of the copyrighted work. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the availability of copyright protection should not depend on the artistic quality or merit of a work, fair use analyses consider certain aspects of the work to be relevant, such as whether it is fictional or non-fictional...To prevent the private ownership of work that rightfully belongs in the public domain, facts and ideas are not protected by copyright—only their particular expression or fixation merits such protection. On the other hand, the social usefulness of freely available information can weigh against the appropriateness of copyright for certain fixations.

The third factor assesses the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work that has been used. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, the more likely the use will be considered fair...Using most or all of a work does not bar a finding of fair use. It simply makes the third factor less favorable to the defendant. For instance, in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. copying entire television programs for private viewing was upheld as fair use, at least when the copying is done for the purposes of time-shifting. In Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, the Ninth Circuit held that copying an entire photo to use as a thumbnail in online search results did not even weigh against fair use, "if the secondary user only copies as much as is necessary for his or her intended use"...However, even the use of a small percentage of a work can make the third factor unfavorable to the defendant, because the "substantiality" of the portion used is considered in addition to the amount used. For instance, in Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises,,[18] the U.S. Supreme Court held that a news article's quotation of fewer than 400 words from President Ford's 200,000-word memoir was sufficient to make the third fair use factor weigh against the defendants, because the portion taken was the "heart of the work." This use was ultimately found not to be fair

The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work. The court not only investigates whether the defendant's specific use of the work has significantly harmed the copyright owner's market, but also whether such uses in general, if widespread, would harm the potential market of the original. The burden of proof here rests on the copyright owner, who must demonstrate the impact of the infringement on commercial use of the work.

Reference: Wikipedia article on Fair Use

So - there will not be an internet where DRM controls everything because, by the definition defined by the Supreme Court, it can not impede fair use. This of course only applies specifically to the United States of America. Your country may have different laws concerning this subject. (IANAL)

Re:Not much

[ewibble]

The right balance is not where return to copyright holders is maximized it is when the return to society is maximized.

You may need to reward copyright holders in order for them to produce stuff, so there is a balance. But the goal is a better society not make a few people rich.

Exactely

[aepervius]

I was , what , 12 ? When I found out my floppy disk original ultima 5 disk stopped working "please insert original". I had started a month before to play around with debug to learn about how to make a ball (actually an ascii O) bounce around a screen. So I went into debug and used it against ultima.com (yes it wasn't even an exe at that time we were still in the 64K segment model). After bypassing the int 3h trap (they were replacing it with a jump to avoid people using it to set a breakpoint) I found out there were about 30 bytes IIRC which were encrypted (started using a single byte key, XOR it against first byte, then add 3 to key, XOR agaisnt next byte etc...). In that XORed area I found out that they were making a strange disk call (can't recall what it was, trying to set it on a track which should not exists but was present on the disk or the contrary) repalced it with 90h / NOP / reencrypted it, exchanged the byte in debug.com write it et voila i could play my legally owned game.

You never forget your first time ;). It is actually what brought me to in the end land in development. And I doubt any 12 year old would be able to have the same chance or the same start today.

Re:The government and business wins?

[Lonewolf666]

Perhaps we would get more of the old gift culture of the internet back, as in legally free works where the author does not bother with DRM in the first place. The absolute number of those may not increase, but they could gain more visibility when people are angry about excessive DRM and start looking for alternatives.

As an example, I like science fiction novels, and there is quite a bit of free stuff out there.
      - The Baen Free Library, older novels that the publisher Baen Books has released for free, with permission of the authors: http://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/free-library/id/2012
      - The writings of some hobby authors, made available for free on various forums and websites dedicated to such stuff. The quality is varying wildly, of course, but there are some pretty good ones. A favorite of mine is "The Last Angel" by "Proximal Flame", found here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/

And of course, the warez scene might not be deterred so easily. As today, there might be a lot of cracked stuff circulating that has its DRM removed.